Ice Road Truckers

It was bitter cold that broke Napoleon's army in Russia in 1812. It was the murderous Russian cold that broke Hitler's army 130 years later.

Today, Ottawa is blanketed in that same cold.  Minus 14 this afternoon. Minus 22 overnight.  According to Environment Canada, windchill will take that to somewhere between -30 and -35 C.  Mixed precip for the capital this week.

Not ideal conditions for a massive protest. I expect some of these idiots will be looking for a warm place to shelter. That raises all sorts of possibilities, none of them pleasant.

Protests on Parliament Hill are not that easy. I covered two of them, first in 1973, the other the following year.  Those were one-day events, the first in August, the next in September.

1974, near enough half a century ago. It was September 30, the opening of Parliament.  The Native People's Caravan had traveled from Vancouver to Ottawa to air a number of grievances. 200 showed up on The Hill.

The year before had seen railway workers, angry at the prospect of being legislated back to work, storm the Centre Block. They caught the commissionaires and two RCMP officers unprepared and massively outnumbered. In the aftermath, new security measures were implemented. They didn't have long to wait.

The Governor General's Foot Guard were present for the opening of Parliament. They were arranged in front of the Centre Block, soldiers shouldering FN-FAL assault rifles, bayonets fixed. Their officer paced along the line, inspecting his men.  I was walking behind the line listening as their officer told his men "they shall not pass." Oh dear. Kent State on the Rideau.

For a while it looked like a standoff. It was unclear how it might end.  Would the protesters try to emulate the railway workers?  Would they storm Parliament?

The standoff came to an abrupt end when hordes of RCMP in full riot gear streamed out of their staging areas in the East and West Blocks. Where in hell did they come from?

Later it emerged that the RCMP came from  A Division headquarters. They had travelled by bus that drove, unnoticed, into the courtyard of, I believe, the Langevin building across Wellington Street. Few knew it at the time but Parliament Hill was honeycombed with tunnels that could be accessed from across the street.

I bring this up, not to pass judgment on the railway workers or First Nations protesters, but to point out that, if the loonies do try to emulate the January 6th storming of the Capitol, they'll be walking into a trap. Only I imagine the authorities will have the weather on their side.